Teaching Subtraction

This page is for ideas and resources to help you teach subtraction in a primary setting.

• Some dice games including "Take 100" from this NSW Dice games page could be useful.

Here are web sites that are useful for teaching or practicing subtraction in a primary setting (with a focus on year 1 at the moment).

• Oswego Speed Grid 1 - the simplest subtraction challenge here select two numbers to subtract from a grid, to match the given answer - you can set how many questions to answer in how many minutes
• Oswego Speed Subtraction Grid 2 - same concept, harder numbers - two digits
• Oswego Speed Subtraction Grid 3 - included here for completeness, but this one does negative numbers as answers!
• Oswego Sum Sense - single digit subtraction where you drag three cards into position to make a number sentence.
• Oswego Spooky Sequence backwards by 1's - counting backwards by ones
• Oswego Spooky Sequence backwards by 2's - counting backwards by twos
• Oswego Spooky Sequence backwards by 5's - counting backwards by fives
• Oswego Spooky Sequence backwards by 10's - counting backwards by tens
• BBC KS1 Bitesize Number Pyramid - this has great graphics and sound, a mixture of simple addition and subtraction, 3 levels of difficulty
• BBC KS2 Subtraction Activity - cut sections of pipe to repair a slide, subtraction up to about 20
• BBC KS2 Addition and Subtraction game with three digit numbers
• fun4thebrain superhero costume dressing subtraction game - the instructions are too hard for six years old but the maths isn't.
• fun4thebrain colouring subtraction game - single digits subtraction then colour in a picture (possibly more colouring than subtraction)
• fun4thebrain Farm Freak Out subtraction game - audio instructions, single digit subtraction, herding sheep, then pigs, then chickens.
• fun4thebrain Can you Dig It subtraction game - questions just into double digits, archaeology - construct a dinosaur at the end.
• fun4thebrain subtraction page - there are too many games here to list them all
• coolmath-games Space Invaders style subtraction game - quite fast and challenging, subtract 2's and/or 3's from a target to get it to zero
• softschools Fishing subtraction game - single digit subtraction
• Woodlands Kent subtraction games collection
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